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It’s called supply and demand… you see it in the after-Christmas sales too (but in the other direction). As long as everyone has free access to these markets and information about them, there’s nothing moral or immoral about it. Now what Bain Capital and the like did (and are doing) in using information and leverage (and political connections) that you and I don’t have, to further enrich a few already wealthy individuals — that’s immoral.

The idea of supply and demand hasn’t existed for the most part since the early 1990s in large business. Near-trusts were formed when the 103rd Congress gutted the SEC. Oil went from 11 major U.S. companies in 1992 to 4 in 2000, with one more major merger (texaco and chevron) that reduced the U.S. players to an oligopoly with 3. Even with internationals BP and RD Shell, it’s normal to have price-fixing in a given town or city. The lack of major price differences between gasoline derived from Saudi vs. Arctic vs. local oil supplies in this nation says a great deal Boise vs. Portland, for example. If it were supply and demand, the gasoline in Boise would be around a dollar and near its current price in Portland, demand being different and the supply conditions being radically different..Concurrent oligopolies came into existence for a host of different things, from media to food companies. Supply and demand only works if there is an actual free market and not price-fixing by a small number who control a given market..Most of our commodities are not supply and demand now, the prices being decided by a small group. That has a downside, though, in that when some commodities went to garbage in quality and/or shot up in price for no reason other than greed, people stopped buying them despite wanting them. .Businesses don’t learn today. For example, when I was in high school in the late 1980s, there was a tomato frost in California. The companies thought they could charge 3 times as much as normal, forgetting that demand requires someone actually willing to pay a given price for something. Tomatoes were not worth that much to most companies and so most tomatoes ended up going into sauce because they sat in warehouses until the dumb-dumbs who thought they could charge anything realized it was not the case. Alternatives were used by restaurants, such as colored apples and beets and other vegetables..The same is true for seasonal vs. off season interests. In recent years, many chains and conglomerates have done very badly because they think it ok to charge far more than the public will pay for their services. Supply and demand has been largely forgotten..As far as Bain capital, since everything turned out to be innuendo, I wouldn’t trust anything stated in the media about it. They wanted something to use against Mr. Romney, and so they made something of nothing. The guy was about as clean as it got, when you consider how hard they tried to find something on him and couldn’t. If there had been anything to Bain, we would have seen prosecutions.

About Pearls Before Swine

At its heart, Pearls Before Swine is the comic strip tale of two friends: an arrogant Rat who thinks he knows it all and a slow-witted Pig who doesn't know any better. Together, this pair offers caustic commentary on humanity's quest for the unattainable. Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams says that Pearls is "one of the few comics that make me laugh out loud."